vendredi 29 juillet 2011
The Balanced Budget Amendment would make the Framers weep.
Bel article sur le site de Slate... Une réponse à la demande des membres du Tea party qui exigent qu'une hausse du plafond de la dette soit accompagnée d'un changement à la Constitution.
"For a group that claims to revere the Constitution, the Tea Party appears pretty determined to deal it a death by a thousand cuts. Its latest attack involves a nasty little piece of constitutional revisionism, complete with a "How can you be against that?" title: the "Balanced Budget Amendment." Putting aside the political questions about whether such a law is wise or practical, it also crashes headlong into the very constitutional principles the Tea Party purports to cherish. Not only that: Now there comes word that Republicans will hold a vote on this amendment next week before even considering raising the debt ceiling. So as part of their misguided effort to undermine the Constitution, they also plan to hold hostage the full faith and credit of the United States of America."
La suite:
http://www.slate.com/id/2299226/
jeudi 28 juillet 2011
mercredi 13 juillet 2011
Shakespeare sonnet 116: ce carnet fait relâche!
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Je ne veux à l'union de deux âmes sincères
Admettre empêchement. L'amour n'est point l'amour
S'il change en trouvant ailleurs le changement,
Ou s'éloigne en trouvant en l'autre l'éloignement.
Oh non ! il est un phare au regard immuable
Fixé sur la tempête et jamais ébranlé !
Pour tout navire errant il est l'astre qui guide,
Dont on prend la hauteur, mais ne sait l'influence.
L'amour n'est point le jouet du Temps, dont la faucille
Emporte en son croissant les joues et lèvres roses ;
Il n'est pas altéré par les jours, les semaines,
Mais endure et survit jusqu'à la fin des temps.
Si ceci est une erreur, contre moi démontrée,
Nul n'a jamais aimé et je n'ai rien écrit.
dimanche 10 juillet 2011
Jeter frappe son 3000e coup sûr
Même un fan des Red Sox sait reconnaître la valeur de Derek Jeter des Yankees! Une journée de cinq coups sûr en cinq apparition au bâton et un circuit pour son 3000e!!!! Un joueur exemplaire qui devient le premier Yankee de toute l'histoire des Yankees à atteindre ce plateau. Un joueur honnête et un très bon capitaine.
vendredi 8 juillet 2011
American dream: égalité ou richesse?
Billet intéressant de Nicolaus Mills sur le site de CNN.
"A look back in time provides a view of the American dream that ought to encourage liberals.
The famed historian James Truslow Adams, in his 1931 study "The Epic of America," is credited with popularizing the term "American dream." But Adams' dream had little to do with the now-popular idea of "striking it rich" and achieving fabulous wealth. Adams' version of the American dream was a modest one. It was a shared dream in which men and women attain "the fullest stature of which they are capable" without trampling one another.
Adams was opposed to a system that, as he put it, "steadily increases the gulf between the ordinary man and the super-rich," and in this view Adams was not just speaking for himself. He was describing the egalitarian core at the center of the historic American dream."
À lire au complet...
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/08/mills.debt.dream/index.html?hpt=po_bn1
Betty Ford est morte
L'épouse de l'ancien Président Ford était célèbre pour sa candeur et ses déclarations "osées". Elle était loin du "politiquement correct"...
" Betty Ford said things that first ladies just don't say, even today. And 1970s America loved her for it.
According to Mrs. Ford, her young adult children probably had smoked marijuana – and if she were their age, she'd try it, too. She told "60 Minutes" she wouldn't be surprised to learn that her youngest, 18-year-old Susan, was in a sexual relationship (an embarrassed Susan issued a denial).
She mused that living together before marriage might be wise, thought women should be drafted into the military if men were, and spoke up unapologetically for abortion rights, taking a position contrary to the president's. "Having babies is a blessing, not a duty," Mrs. Ford said.
The former first lady died at age 93, family friend Marty Allen said Friday. Details of Ford's death and where she died were not immediately available, and Allen, chairman emeritus of the Ford Foundation, said he would not comment further until he received instruction from the family.
He also said he expected the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum would release information.
Betty Ford's comments weren't the kind of genteel, innocuous talk expected from a first lady, and a Republican one no less. Her unscripted comments sparked tempests in the press and dismayed President Gerald Ford's advisers, who were trying to soothe the national psyche after Watergate. But to the scandal-scarred, Vietnam-wearied, hippie-rattled nation, Mrs. Ford's openness was refreshing.
Candor worked for Betty Ford, again and again. She would build an enduring legacy by opening up the toughest times of her life as public example.
In an era when cancer was discussed in hushed tones and mastectomy was still a taboo subject, the first lady shared the specifics of her breast cancer surgery. The publicity helped bring the disease into the open and inspired countless women to seek breast examinations.
Her most painful revelation came 15 months after leaving the White House, when Mrs. Ford announced that she was entering treatment for a longtime addiction to painkillers and alcohol. It turned out the famously forthcoming first lady had been keeping a secret, even from herself."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/08/betty-ford-dies-former-dead_n_893664.html?ir=Canada
The grapes of Wrath...
Juste pour le titre de l'article, ça méritait un détour!
Le républicain Paul Ryan, auteur de propositions budgétaires généreuses en coupures dans les programmes sociaux a soulevé l'indignation de quelques voisins de table en consommant avec des amis la bouteille de vin la plus coûteuse de l'établissement, Un total de 700$ pour deux bouteilles... Pas un scandale, un petit manque de délicatesse en public?
"Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.
It was the same night reports started trickling out about President Obama pressing Congressional leaders to consider changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for GOP support for targeted tax increases.
The pomp and circumstance surrounding the waiter's presentation, uncorking and decanting of the pricey Pinot Noir caught the attention of another diner who had already recognized Ryan sitting with two other men nearby.
Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan's table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same pricetag."
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/rep-paul-ryans-pricey-pinot-noir.php?ref=fpa
Deal pour le plafond de la dette: cinq raisons d'espérer...
Voici ce qu'on retrouve sur le site de Politico:
1. For Obama, failure is not an option.
2. A tax by any other name.
3. Wall Street stress.
4. Recess time.
5. Shared fate.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58538.html
Michele Bachmann et son sex appeal!
Un conseiller de Tim Pawlenty affirmé il y a peu (il s'est excusé depuis) que Michele Bachmann obtenait des résultats intéressants en raison de son sex appeal.
Voici la réponse de Mme Bachmann:
"Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was asked on Thursday for her reaction to news that a top adviser to rival GOP contender Tim Pawlenty said she has "a little sex appeal."
“Well listen, I’m 55 years old, I’ve given birth to five kids and I’ve raised 23 foster kids. So, that sounds like good news to me,” Bachmann told conservative radio host Scott Hennen when asked for her take on the matter.
Pawlenty adviser Vin Weber issued an apology after telling The Hill in an interview, "She's got hometown appeal, she's got ideological appeal, and, I hate to say it, but she's got a little sex appeal too." Weber made the remarks in predicting Bachmann will be tough to beat in the Iowa caucuses and the upcoming Ames straw poll next month.
Weber told "The Fix" blog at the Washington Post that Bachmann called him after he made the comments. "She said she knows I’ve always bent over backwards to say good things about her and that she took my comments as complimentary,” he said in an email. “We have been and remain good friends.”"
Obama: encore du chemin à faire...
Oui, il y a la dette et sont tristement célèbre plafond, mais il y a également le chômage...
" President Barack Obama says the uncertainty over whether lawmakers will raise the nation's debt limit is keeping businesses from hiring.
Speaking in the Rose Garden, Obama says that once Congress reaches an agreement on the debt ceiling, businesses will have the confidence they need to add workers to their payrolls.
"Today’s job report confirms what most Americans already know: We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to give people the security and opportunity that they deserve," Obama said.
The Labor Department said Friday that the economy added only 18,000 jobs last month, the fewest jobs in nine months. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 9.2 percent."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/08/obama-jobs-report-unemployment-debt-ceiling_n_893251.html
jeudi 7 juillet 2011
mercredi 6 juillet 2011
Twitter town hall: exemples de questions pour le Président.
Utile? Si oui, à quel point? Politique et médias sociaux.
"But, this Twitter town hall was nevertheless a thing that happened today. As with any time social media gets knit up into the world of politics and the media, the actual platform was little more than part of the scenery. Tweets appeared on a screen, and Jack Dorsey (a.k.a. @jack, the Guy From Twitter), read the questions aloud, much in the same way CNN has been doing ever since they discovered Twitter. President Obama then provided lengthy extemporaeous answers to those questions. Aside from a tweet Obama himself sent at the outset, soliciting suggestions for what programs should be cut or preserved in the debt ceiling debate (cue the RNC making fun of this -- "Obama seeks help on Twitter for how to do his job"), there was hardly any tweeting involved. The questions may have well been pulled from a hat, or carried into the room via pigeon, or even just asked, in real time, by people standing right there!
At one point, Obama quipped that he understood that on Twitter, answers should be brief. And that got us thinking: What if Obama also have to confine himself to answering each question with only 140 characters? The town hall would have been much shorter in duration, for one thing! But would the answers have been as revealing or as substantive? Well, we took our best shot at answering that question, by condensing Obama's town hall answers into tweet-sized responses.
One day, we will all communicate like this. And then: extinction!"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/06/twitter-town-hall-if-obama-only-had-one-tweet_n_891665.html
Michele Bachmann grimpe dans les sondages au New Hamshire
Une candidate sérieuse? Les derniers sondages semblent pointer dans la même direction.
"According to Democratic pollster PPP, Bachmann is polling at 18% among Republican voters, second only to Romney at 25%. Not only that, non-candidate Sarah Palin is third at 11%, suggesting Bachmann may have more socially conservative and Tea Party votes up for grabs. The rest of the field are in single digits: Ron Paul at 9%, Rick Perry and Herman Cain each at 7% Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty at 6%, and Newt Gingrich at 4%.
Bachmann has gained 14 points in PPP's polling over the last three months and other polls confirm heavy movement as well, even if she's farther back from Romney. A University of New Hampshire poll and a Suffolk University poll each showed her gaining 8% since her debate performance in the state, but they peg her total support at 12% and 11% respectively, versus 35% and 36% for Romney.
For Romney, who governed nearby Massachusetts and vacations in the state, New Hampshire is a crucial firewall that he's counting on to protect him from a potentially surging opponent coming out of the Iowa caucuses. Bachmann has become a top-tier contender in Iowa, where she was born, but the state's socially conservative GOP has raised questions about whether she could appeal to more moderate races. If she keeps up her momentum in New Hampshire, that conventional wisdom could be turned on its ear and the path to victory for Romney may be that much harder."
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/the-real-deal-polls-show-bachmann-surge-in-new-hampshire.php?ref=tn
Caricatures Casey Anthony: des insatisfaits?
Difficile de ne pas comprendre ces caricatures, le jugement du jury a été une surprise majeure.
DSK: "c'est la catastrophe" (Washington post)
Opinion de Ruth Marcus dans le Washington Post de ce matin:
"Some have argued that the very fizzling of the case against Strauss-Kahn represents the triumph of the American legal system. William Saletan in Slate: “What the collapse of this case proves is that it’s possible to distinguish true rape accusations from false ones — and that the government, having staked its reputation on an accuser’s credibility, diligently investigated her and disclosed her lies. The system worked.” Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast: “whether or not DSK goes free, his case reflects well on American justice. We can hold our heads high.”
Not mine. The system worked — but only after Strauss-Kahn lost one important post and, most likely, his chances for another, even more important one, the presidency of France. Maybe it couldn’t happen to a creepier guy, but Strauss-Kahn has been done a terrible disservice. It remains possible that the housekeeper is both liar and victim, but it is looking less and less likely. Either way, the case against Strauss-Kahn cannot be sustained. Her credibility is too shattered.
Prosecutors were too hasty in bringing charges against Strauss-Kahn, then too slow in unraveling — and exposing — the problems with his accuser. The argument that they needed to act quickly to prevent his leaving the country is unconvincing. Surely the head of the International Monetary Fund would have been back in the neighborhood soon enough, but after prosecutors had done the necessary homework about their victim. Alternatively, Strauss-Kahn could have been removed from the plane and arrangements made for him to remain voluntarily in the United States while the investigation unfolded. Or he could have been let free, thereby removing the deadline for prosecutors to seek an indictment. Did anyone really think the IMF chief was going to pull a Roman Polanski and flee?
As to the slowness in discovering and revealing the shakiness of the case, “The minute we realize that our case may be taking a different posture, we run and shout it from the highest mountain,” Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon told the Wall Street Journal.
Not exactly. Strauss-Kahn was arrested on May 14. Less than two weeks later, his lawyers wrote to prosecutors warning of “substantial information that . . . would seriously undermine the quality of this prosecution and also gravely undermine the credibility of the complainant.” What looked like sleazy defense tactics now seems prescient.
At least by June 8, prosecutors recognized they had a problem, when the housekeeper acknowledged lying — about a gang rape, no less — on her asylum application. It was not until June 30, after discovery and translation of the incriminating conversation with her jailed boyfriend, that prosecutors made their doubts public.
We have, thankfully, a criminal justice system that takes seriously the word of an immigrant chambermaid against that of a powerful international figure. We have, thankfully, a criminal justice system that requires prosecutors to hand over exculpatory evidence. Any time a criminal case is dropped, any time an accused is acquitted at trial, there is the inevitable questioning about the ruin of a reputation. That is an unfortunate but unavoidable cost of an adversarial system. But the cost in this case was pushed unnecessarily high by needlessly aggressive prosecutorial tactics.
C’est une catastrophe."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dominique-strauss-kahn-and-the-wheels-of-injustice/2011/07/05/gHQAKPwkzH_story.html
DSK: abandon des charges aujourd'hui?
Pas nécessairement... Les avocats de DSK rencontrent aujourd'hui les procureurs de l'état. Recherche de compromis?
"Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s defense team gave indications last week that he would be unwilling to plead guilty to any crime unless prosecutors presented strong evidence. Barring that, the Manhattan district attorney’s office would have to dismiss the charges altogether or go to trial.
The prosecution must also consider whether it believes the case is strong enough to proceed to trial if Mr. Strauss-Kahn refuses to plead guilty.
William W. Taylor III, who, along with Benjamin Brafman, is representing Mr. Strauss-Kahn, declined to comment Tuesday on whether a meeting was scheduled or what steps would be taken in the case.
Erin M. Duggan, the chief spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, also declined to comment.
Mr. Vance, in interviews last week, reiterated his position that his office was taking the appropriate steps in a difficult case, given the evidence it had. Though some have suggested that his office moved too swiftly to indict Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the district attorney, who is in his second year on the job, got a ringing endorsement Tuesday on his handling of the case.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, at a news conference in Brooklyn, praised Mr. Vance, saying he was “turning out to be a very good district attorney.”
“He’s taking on high-profile cases, and he’s facing them,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “And he probably made the right decision. Because if the allegations were true, are true, he had a legitimate worry about somebody fleeing this country, and we’d never get them back.”
Mr. Strauss-Kahn was taken off a plane bound for France when he was arrested at Kennedy International Airport.
But Mr. Bloomberg said something that might be looked at favorably by Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the French: that he was opposed to “perp walks,” the act of parading people accused of crimes before news cameras.
“I’ve always thought that the perp walks were outrageous, but that’s only my view,” he said. “Nobody’s asked me, and I have no say in it.”
In other developments on Tuesday, the housekeeper filed a libel lawsuit against The New York Post in State Supreme Court in the Bronx for articles in which the paper called her a prostitute.
The lawsuit, which asks for an unspecified amount of money, cites various front-page headlines, like “DSK Maid a Hooker,” “DSK ‘Refused to Pay’ Hooker Maid for Sex” and “She Saw Johns While in DA Protection!”
The stories were false, the lawsuit says, arguing that the woman has been subjected to “ridicule throughout the world.”
A spokeswoman for The Post, Suzi Halpin, said, “We stand by our reporting,” and declined to comment further.
Asked if the housekeeper had engaged in prostitution, Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, the lead prosecutor on the Strauss-Kahn case, said in an interview on Sunday, “I do not have one scintilla of information in that regard.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/nyregion/strauss-kahn-lawyers-and-prosecution-to-meet.html?_r=1&hp
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